Road transport accounts for more than 70% of freight traffic in Santa Catarina and plays an important role in regional, national and international integration. Due to disinvestment in recent years, federal highways have become logistics bottlenecks. This year, the federal government’s record investment of R$1.3 billion aims to change this reality.

Federal highways received more money in 2023 than in the last four years – Photo: DIVULGAÇÃO/ND

According to the Ministry of Transport, the value of investments this year is five times the amount of investments in 2022, and the amount for 2020, 2021 and 2022 is approximately 1.2 billion reais.

The investment would already improve the ICM (index of technical condition) of the federal highways in Santa Catarina, according to the DNIT (National Department of Transport Infrastructure). At the end of 2022, 35% of roads were considered good. Now the index has jumped more than 50%.

“Even in the midst of this rain we managed to increase our good roads index by 20%, which was 31%, at the beginning of the year it rose to 36% and today we have about 50%,” said Alisson Rodrigo de Andrade, head of the regional office DNIT in Santa Catarina, emphasizes that the goal for 2024 is to end the terrible index of the federal road network in the state and achieve a good index of at least 70%.

This year saw progress on federal highways on both BR-470 and BR-280, where significant investments have been made from Jaragua to the junction with BR-101. He stressed that investments of 1.3 billion reais this year will be used to clear the construction backlog and significantly improve maintenance contracts.

Among other investments planned on the highway, Andrade recalled Crema, an acronym for the Contracts, Rehabilitation and Maintenance Program, which in one of the contracts calls for the extension of lanes at kilometers 269 and 302 of the BR-280 to prevent the abandonment of populated areas. isolated during rainy periods.

The 2024 forecast includes allocations through amendments.

The 2024 budget forecast is still being processed in the National Congress in the form of a bill and must be adjusted after individual amendments are made by parliamentarians and peers.

The head of the DNIT in SC said that he spoke with deputies and senators of the Parliamentary Forum of Santa Catarina, as well as with the rapporteur of the LOA (Law of Annual Budget) project for 2024, Luis Carlos Motta (PL-SP).

Engineer Alisson Rodrigo, from DNIT-SC – Photo: Rodolfo Espinola / AgênciaAL/ND

According to Alisson Andrade, initial expectations should be more than 1 billion reais in 2024 for work and maintenance of federal highways in the state. In a meeting with colleagues from Santa Catarina, the LOA rapporteur provided assistance and opened up space so that if there is no possibility of amendments, an additional amount of R$300 million could be added in addition to the R$670 million announced in the 2024 Plan. LOA. .

“This is important so that we can deliver these works in the current portfolio at 70%, 80% operational capacity so that we can open up some new strategic works next year,” the superintendent said at a meeting of the Chamber of Transport and Logistics. in Fiesca (Federation of Industry of Santa Catarina).

In this scenario, it can be seen that individual parliamentary amendments and amendments from the Santa Catarina bench have been given strong weight in this budget composition to maintain high investment in the state’s federal highways.

Funding will improve 127 km of roads

This week, BNDES approved funding for the state of Santa Catarina amounting to R$631.9 million. The resources will be used to improve road infrastructure on 127.4 km of roads in Santa Catarina and are part of a total investment of R$702.1 million.

Approved investments primarily include short sections of highways used for local transportation in rural areas of the state.

The federal roads budget for 2024 is still being discussed – Photo: PRF/Reproduction/ND

The work could benefit about 350,000 people. The work includes both the construction and asphalting of new roads and the restoration of areas to improve and expand traffic conditions. The highways are distributed across five macro-regions – West, Midwest, Greater Florianópolis, Planalto and Vale do Itajaí.

“The time when our state was forgotten is behind us. Lula’s government has guaranteed the necessary resources to rebuild our roads, made record investments in duplicating the BR-470, and resumed work on the BR-280. Now the people of Santa Catarina can count on the federal government,” said Ana Paula Lima (PT), Deputy President of the Government in the Chamber of Deputies.

Familiarize yourself with the main work being carried out on federal highways in the South Caucasus

• Revitalization of the road surface of 47 kilometers of BR-163, including additional lanes and shoulders
• Five new overpasses and acceleration of duplication of sections of BR-470, on which 46 kilometers have already been duplicated. Investments in highways this year will reach 174 million reais.
• The duplication operates on 74 kilometers of the BR-280 highway, which provides access to the ports of São Francisco do Sul and Itapoa.